A collection of inspirational videos and text featuring America’s finest religious thinkers, stories of personal faith, and reflections on spiritual topics, gathered from television broadcasts of 30 Good Minutes, a weekly multifaith program in Chicago.

Welton Gaddy, President Emeritus of the Interfaith Alliance and Pastor for Preaching and Worship at Northminster Baptist Church in Monroe, Louisiana, reflects on the interfaith movement, declaring that the way to a hope-filled future is that of walking and working together. This program originally aired on October 18, 2009 and is titled Walking Together.

The Rev. Dr. C. Welton Gaddy is the President Emeritus of the national nonpartisan grassroots and educational organizations, Interfaith Alliance and Interfaith Alliance Foundation and serves as the Pastor for Preaching and Worship at Northminster Baptist Church in Monroe, Louisiana. Welton is one of 20 international religious leaders on the Council of 100 Leaders, a group created by the World Economic Forum to improve dialogue and understanding between the Western and Islamic worlds. While he retired as President of Interfaith Alliance in 2014, he continues as a senior advisor to the organization.

Judith Valente - Reflection on Praise & Prayer

For over a year now, I’ve been spending about a week a month at Mount St. Scholastica, a Benedictine Monastery for women in Atchison, Kansas. I went to this place in the heart of America’s heartland to see if ancient monastic traditions had anything to teach a modern professional woman like me. I’ve learned plenty. We might think of monasteries as throw-backs to the past. But, in fact, monasteries offer us a glimpse of the future, a future our world so desperately needs: one that stresses community over competition, service over self-aggrandizement, quietude over gratuitous talk, simplicity over constant consumption.

Like many professionals, I usually start my day by reading the newspaper and tuning in to National Public Radio. But at Mount St. Scholastica, the day begins at dawn, with prayer. The Sisters make this moving gesture of shaping the sign of the cross across their lips. And they say,“Lord, open my lips and we shall proclaim your praise.” It’s a commitment to make the entire day—all our words and actions—a way of praising God. I can’t tell you how many times that thought has prevented me from blowing my stack at a co-worker, or making negative comments, because if what I’m doing during the course of my work day isn’t in some way praising God, then maybe it isn’t worth doing.

Dr. Benjamin Reaves, Vice President of Mission and Ministries for the Adventist Health System in Orlando Florida, talks about trusting God when we are afraid. His own experience with grave illness brought him many times to what he calls, "the land of midnight meditation."

This archived 30 Good Minutes broadcast features a message from Ben Reaves titled, Facing Fear, and was first broadcast in October 2007.